


Blood red and ocean blue

by broken_ankle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 12:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19151383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broken_ankle/pseuds/broken_ankle
Summary: And you are lost, and you are asking the sun why it did not give you death where it promised you, and what are you even supposed to do with your life now that you are not dead?Or, sometimes you don't start living until you die.





	Blood red and ocean blue

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, the suicidal thoughts are not carried forward, and they are not discussed in depth.  
> Also, I do not live on the Western side of the Atlantic, and English is not my first language.  
> Additionally, I have not gone through everything this charachter has.  
> I wrote this because I am struggling with something, and sometimes I need to vent in written form.

You are alone, you always have been, and why do you yearn for company anyway? Why do you want so desperately a hug, a kiss on the cheek, a kind word to wake you up, blue eyes to see and go to sleep? Blue, blue eyes, the colour of the ocean you have never even seen in person, not once even now that you live in the Bay Area, blue like the colour you liked until you saw your own blood, spilled on the ground of a playground, adults seeing and not caring, your ribs aching for weeks after, your breath rattling, but there are no people with blood red eyes, so maybe ocean blue is alright, maybe ocean blue can be everything you need, everything you want, everything you will never have, but that is alright because what is a dream if not a ghost of something you do not deserve?

What is a dream if not something you will never achieve?

And do not think about your sister, about her dream that is coming true in front of your eyes, do not think about her parents that cheer you on with quiet Japanese words over a phone line, you curled up in your bed thinking about how sharp you could make your scissors, and how, and all the while with ocean blue in the background, with a stress ball tucked safely into your pocket since you pretended to forget you had to give it back, and ocean blue overcomes you and you sob into the phone, and your sister's mom stops talking and just breathes, just helps you from half a continent away, from a place where there is no ocean blue but a lot of blood red, where you discovered the world for the pain it is, for the pain it brings.

And is pain not the only thing tethering you to this world?

The pain it would cause your sister, and her parents, and maybe, if you are lucky, if you read the situation correctly, if you are not so overcome with dreams of friendship that they mask the disgust, to your best friend, the quiet boy sleeping on the other bed in the room, the roommate fate wanted for you, or maybe it was the university, you cannot tell anymore.

You only know there are two five four days to your eighteenth birthday and slightly more before you are free, but you do not care for how many more, as long as they will be over, as long as you can finally sign your name on that sheet of paper, as long as you can train and then be shipped overseas, you do not care with whom, you do not care why, you just want to be free and that is the only thing that matters, the only thing that you have ever wanted since you were old enough to look at your own blood and realize you were too skinny and too young to stand up for yourself, that you needed to grow up, that your mind is not a superpower, but the worst thing that could happen to you, that maybe everyone is right and you should not have one nine six points of something you do not really believe you have, because people under the genius threshold are happy, and you are over it, and you are the most pathetic, miserable thing you have ever met, and you have met plenty in your tour of foster houses.

You do not believe you deserve whatever it is your sister sees in you, you do not deserve your best friend, and really, you do not deserve your only other friend either, but they stick around for reasons that are only their own, and you are just too selfish to scream, to beg them to leave you alone, because everyone leaves and maybe this time it can be on your own terms and not a stab in the back when you finally relaxed after two months with the same family.

Nothing ever lasts, and so you just want to be shipped overseas, to taste life in the middle of death, and you know you will die, you know your whole life served to send you to die in a back alley in some Middle East city, but so what? There are lives that bring their subjects to grandness, others that bring them to utter despair and freezing waters, there are lives for cardboard boxes and lives for mansions. So what if your life will bring you to die in a back alley in some Middle East city? You accept it, like you will accept the bomb, or the mine, or the hail of bullets, friendly fire or not, that will end your life, with a smile on your lips and ocean blue in the background, knowing there was a reason all along you never saw the ocean, not even when you were flying over it.

But for now you are here, sobbing into a phone, curled on your bed like a discarded dog that yearns for its owner, but you have always been more of a cat person, and you cannot stop the tears streaming down your cheeks even if you know it is not fair, it is not fair, and you should stop bothering your sister, and her parents, and your best friend, and your only other friend, but you have always been too selfish not to soak up in the small measures of attention anyone offered you, so you do not stop, you do not know how, and the moth is already spiralling down, and the flame is ever-so-bright, and the moth cannot stop diving to its death just like you cannot stop sinking into your hole of selfishness and future pain, but that is alright, because you learnt to roll with the punches when they were real, and now you just have to adapt your strategy to cutting words and people under the genius threshold that are happy but want you not to be, and they do not realize you have never been happy, and you have a scar just under your heart that proves it.

Sometimes you think Dr Manning would have done better leaving you to drown in a puddle of your own blood, barely one month old and your mama's arms still around you, wailing or perhaps not, you cannot remember, you were too young, and you might have one nine six points, but there are things even your mind cannot do, and still looking at the black thing that killed your mama and your papa ( _no not papa never papa he never wanted you never cared for you or your mama)_ like an old friend, like you already knew it would be something like that, one day, to give you reprieve from this world.

But in the meantime you will have to live, and so you force your sobs to subside and your voice to stabilize, and you thank your sister's mother and you try to sleep and fail, because sleep means blissful black, not cuddles with ocean blue, not something you will never have and getting up at five in the morning to run and run and run because otherwise that hail of friendly fire will never have a chance to get to you, because you have a pair of scissors and you finally figured out how to sharpen them, and where to use them, and most days you have to shut them into a drawer to quiet down the voice in your head, and you are slowly descending into your personal circle of hell, but that is alright, because you know it needs to happen, you know there is no heaven on this earth, nor hell, but sometimes you think the Serpent was wrong, that human beings can be more cruel than demons, but you have yet to encounter a human being with more Grace than an angel, you have yet to prove the Serpent right, and in the meantime you work on the assumption that he is only partly right, that people are worse than demons but not better than angels, that She has a plan _(no no She cannot have a plan She does not exist_ ), and you are once again swept in another world, both better and more real than yours, and you have to distance yourself from the story, to absorb something else, to filter whichever fantasy caught your mind now and go on your way, because you cannot hide in fantasy to escape your harsh reality, you cannot escape your reality period.

You live, and you will die, and at least you know how, at least you know your whole life prepared you for that moment, for a friendly hail of bullets that will kill every last trace of ocean blue, and leave only your blood red smile, your eyes unseeing, open on a sun that is just a mass of gas, providing you life and death and everything, no matter how short the time, in between.

You run and run and run, and only one nine six days to your birthday, you really hate that number, do you not, and run and run, one five eight, and you run and run, one ow four, and you run, seven two, and you run, thirteen, and you run and run and congratulations, you are legally responsible for yourself now, you may want to vote now, you still have to wait three years to drink, but you do not care, because you are eighteen, finally, and now you can run to your death with a smile on your face, you can go and die, and the three maybe five if you are lucky people who care about you will not feel so much pain when you will finally stare at the sun with a smile on your face and no more ocean blue on your mind.

You graduate, you have a roll of paper in your hands, and polyester sticks to your skin under a sun that is keeping you alive for another year at most, and everyone is courting you, Harvard and Stanford and CalTech and MIT and Princeton and Yale, but you only want Fort Benning or even less, a chance to die and be done with all this, because you are too selfish and too coward to use your scissors, and suddenly ocean blue is looking for you, and you go, how could you not, and you receive a kiss for your trouble and repay with a kick in the shin, and ocean blue is looking at you with what could be pain and cannot be, and you turn tail and run, because you are a coward, you do not deserve anything good, but ocean blue just wanted to humiliate you more and you are too selfish to let yourself fall for it again.

You force yourself to celebrate your roll if paper, to consider the courtship from Harvard and Stanford and CalTech and MIT and Princeton and Yale, but in the depth of your mind you know your one nine six points, eight now because they can grow and yours have and now you have another number you hate with every fibre of your being, will go to waste, because you do not care for the Ivy League, you have never cared, you chose this second-grade university for your sister, because you had to occupy two years before you could go to Fort Benning or even less, before you began your race towards death with a smile on your face, and ocean blue is for the first time nowhere to be felt.

You go, then, you apply, you get accepted into the only school you ever wanted to be accepted into and you bid farewell to your sister, to her parents, to your best friend and your only other friend, and ocean blue is nothing but a speck of dust in the corner of your mind. You train, you get accepted into the corps, you get shipped off overseas and you are happy, or as happy as your life can afford you to be, and you run towards death with a smile on your face and lie in a pool of your own blood with only a fleeting thought to ocean blue, and you welcome the blissful black even if your eyes slip closed.

You wake up, and at first you think that was just a dream, but you have never had dreams so real, you cannot have, so you know this is real, the hospital is real, and you have lost your right leg from mid-shin down, but at least you are alive and hey, rookie, they want to give you a medal, and not only the two Purple Hearts you deserve but they never got around to give you, a proper medal that means a one-way first-class ticket to Arlington when you kick the bucket, but you are alive, and what are you expected to do with this? You are twenty, not even old enough to drink, not that you care, and the President will give you a medal on behalf of the Congress of the glorious _(oh how glorious)_ United States of America, and hey rookie, you saved Wash and Michael, you saved, and you're officially one of us now, rookie, now that they ship you back home because you have lost your right leg from mid-shin down, and you are useless now here in some Middle East city.

And you are lost, and you are asking the sun why it did not give you death where it promised you, and what are you even supposed to do with your life now that you are not dead?

Your sister and her mother cry when they see you again, and your sister's father pat you on the back and help you get adjusted to the crutches, until you can get a prosthesis, musuko, don't worry, we'll help you.

The medals are heavy on your uniform, and you are in a wheelchair because of course you cannot use crutches in front of the whole Nation, you are strong, you are a soldier, but crutches are for normal people, not for war heroes, and you bite your tongue because you are not a war hero, you should have been a war casualty, a flag on a casket, a small locker of things shipped home with a corpse, but now you are not, and you have to be in a wheelchair in front of the whole Nation, and something in your mind rears its head and tells you that now you have to find yourself another death.

So you get a prosthesis, work hard for it, surprise your therapist on your own foot and piece of metal earlier than you should be able to, and your other therapist manages to tear down your walls and get you to work on yourself.

You are twenty-two by the time you are ready to find your life, and maybe you do not hate the number one nine eight as much as you did, because you ask, and the Ivy League answers, and you are back in a dorm, but this time alone, even if your best friend is in the city, working for his own grad degree and then he will stop, because he knows what he wants to do after and that will suffice.

You do not know how many doctorates will satiate your newly-discovered thirst for knowledge, but you know that now you can count on five people, you are really proud of yourself for the lack of doubt, you can count on them without hesitation, and you smile not at the sun but at the papers strewn on your desk as you become Dr Zachary Travers, Ph.D., and then Dr Zachary Travers, Ph.D.s, and then you keep adding, even if you are now twenty-nine and you have decided that this is the last, Mathematics is your last doctorate and then you will have to find a stimulating job, because you promised yourself that Mathematics would be the last, and you pretend not to know why, but you really do, and the reason is a colour you have not thought about in seven years, not since smiling at the sun in a pool of your own blood, again, and you will not think about it now, even if you are thinking about it and you never wanted anyone else.

But ocean blue could be on the other side of the country, or on the other side of the ocean, and you just cannot bring yourself to ask.

Until your inbox receives something the day before your final Ph.D., until you recognize the name and you realize you are mature enough now to give it a chance.

You grab your final roll of paper and smile, and somewhere in the crowd ocean blue smiles right back at you, and you decide that maybe there is a reason you have never wanted someone else, a reason the last colour you thought about smiling up at the sun in a pool of your own blood was not blood red but ocean blue.

Maybe he wants you back, this time.

Maybe you have finally found happiness, and maybe you deserve him.


End file.
